Unimodularity theorem slides

About quantum calculus

What is it about?

Quantum calculus deals with other flavors of calculus and especially studies calculus on discrete sets. Examples of non-traditional calculus flavors are non-standard analysis, difference calculus or calculus on graphs. All these flavors of calculus can be seen as extensions of traditional calculus or calculus on Riemannian manifolds as the usual calculus can be seen as a special or limiting case.

What about traditional calculus?

The idea is to build notions which look exactly as the known knotions of calculus. An ideal generalization of traditional calculus to the discrete does not change language at all but just changes the meaning of the operations, possibly after an extension of language. This has already been realized in the form of internal set theory of Nelson. But this flavor of calculus is not easy to manage and teach and due to the reliance on more logic a bit more risky: its easy to make mistakes.One can imagine that under other historical circumstances, Quantum calculus could have been first developed and the calculus we know later been derived and have the status of generalized function theory or geometric measure theory. In the same way that we could in principle for practical purposes work with rational numbers alone, one could look exclusively at discrete geometries and look at continuum geometries as limiting cases. Any computation on a device is by nature finite as there is only a finite amount of memory available. In some sense, numerical analysis is already a quantized calculus. However, the theory as told in numerical analysis books is much less elegant than the actual theory so that this is not the right approach.

What is the main idea?

One of the useful ideas of calculus is to look at “rates of changes” in order to “predict the future”. This idea is everywhere: look at the sequence 4, 15, 40, 85, 156, 259, 400, 585 for example. How does it continue? In order to figure that out, we take derivatives 11, 25, 45, 71, 103, 141, 185, then again derivatives 14, 20, 26, 32, 38, 44 and again derivatives 6,6,6,6,6,6. We see now a pattern and can integrate the three times starting with 6,6,6,6,6,6,6 always adjusting the constant. This gives us the next term 820. We can predict the future by analyzing the past.

More generally, any geometric theory with a notion of exterior derivative on “forms” and integration of “forms” is a calculus flavor. A nice example is Riemannian geometry, which generalizes calculus in flat space. The frame work allows then to define notions like curvature or geodesics which are so central in modern theories of gravity. These notions can be carried over to discrete spaces.

But it is not only physics which motivates to look at calculus. A big “customer” of calculus ideas is computer science. Discrete versions of notions like gradient, curvature, surface etc allow a computer to “see” or to build new objects, never seen. All movies using some kind of CGI make heavy use of calculus ideas.

Why do we study calculus?

The power, richness and applicability of calculus are all reasons why we teach it. Calculus is a wonderful and classical construct, rich of historical connections and related with many other fields. We hardly have to mention all the applications of calculus (the last 2 minutes of this 15 minute review for single variable calculus give a few). We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible when extending calculus and how it can be applied in the future.

Traditional calculus

The traditional exterior derivatives (like div,curl grad) or curvature notions based on differential forms define a traditional calculus. Integration and derivatives lead to theorems like Stokes, Gauss-Bonnet, Poincaré-Hopf or Brouwer-Lefschetz. In classical calculus, the basic building blocks of space are simplices. Differential forms are functions of these simplices. In the continuum, one can not see these infinitesimal simplices. To remedy this, sheaf theoretical constructs like tensor calculus have been developed, notably by Cartan. In the discrete, when looking at graphs, the structure is simple and transparent. The theorems become easy. Here, here and here are some write ups.

Calculus on graphs

Calculus on graphs is probably the simplest quantum calculus with no limits: everything is finite and combinatorial. I prefer to work on graphs but one can work also with finite abstract simplicial complexes. It turns out that the category of complexes and especially graphs is quite powerful, despite its simplicity. Graphs are quite an adequate language because the Barycentric refinement of an abstract finite simplicial complex is always the Whitney complex of a finite simple graph. Having “trivialized calculus”, one can look at more complex constructs.

Interaction calculus

In interaction calculus, functions on pairs (or more generally k-tuples) of interacting (=intersecting) simplices in the graph are at the center of attention. Exterior derivatives again lead to cohomology. While in classical calculus, the derivative is df(x)=f(dx) (which is Stokes theorem as dx is the boundary chain), in second level interaction calculus, the derivative is df(x,y)=f(dx,y)+(-1)dim(x) f(x,dy). The chain complex is bigger. The cohomology groups more interesting.

Interaction cohomology

The analogue of Euler characteristic is the more general Wu characteristic. There are generalized versions of the just mentioned theorems. At the moment (2016), only a glimpse of the power of interaction calculus is visible. There are indications that it could be powerful: it allows to distinguish topological spaces, which traditional calculus does not: here is a case study.

Open mind

Its not very helpful to look only for analogies to the continuum. Very general principles (numerical and computer science demonstrate constantly how finite machines mode things) show that the continuum can be emulated very well in the discrete. We also have to look out for new things. A surprise for example is that there is a Laplacian for discrete geometries which is always invertible: discovered in February 2016 and proven in the fall 2016, it leads to invariants and potential theory different from the usual Hodge Laplacian. Unlike the Hodge Laplacian which is the square of the Dirac Laplacian, this new Laplacian has a quantized and completely finite potential theory, no super symmetry. The total energy of the geometry is the Euler characteristic.

Project page

For more, see the project page on my personal web page. The entries here are more like drafts, sometimes expository, sometimes research logs which I leave as it is for me also interesting to see later, where and how I was stuck. So, it can happen that initially in an entry, the story has not yet been clear but at the end been understood.

About comments

At the moment, with very limited time at hand, comments are not turned on. This might change at some later if more material has been added.

What is geometry?

In the context of quantum calculus one is interested in discrete structures like graphs or finite abstract simplicial complexes studied primarily in combinatorics or combinatorial...

In the context of quantum calculus one is interested in discrete structures like graphs or finite abstract simplicial complexes studied primarily in combinatorics or combinatorial topology. Are they geometry? Are they calculus? What is geometry? In MathE320 I try to use the following definition: Geometry is the science of shape, size and symmetry. The symmetry statement is borrows from Klein’s … ….

This blog entry delivers an other example of an elliptic complex which can be used in discrete Atiyah-Singer or Atiyah-Bott type setups as examples. We had seen that when deforming an elliptic complex with an integrable Lax deformation, we get complex elliptic complexes. We had wondered in that blog entry whether a complex can lead to quaternion-valued fields. The discussion … ….

As a follow-up note to the strong ring note, I tried between summer and fall semester to formulate a discrete Atiyah-Singer and Atiyah-Bott result for simplicial complexes. The classical theorems from the sixties are heavy, as they involve virtually every field of mathematics. By searching for analogues in the discrete, I hoped to get a grip on the ideas. (I … ….

The strong ring is a category of geometric objects G which are disjoint unions of products of
simplicial complexes. Each has a Dirac operator D and a connection operator L. Both are related in
various ways to topology.

Implementing the Dirac operator D for products of simplicial complexes without going to the Barycentric refined simplicial complex has numerical advantages. If G is a finite abstract simplicial complex with n elements and H is a finite abstract simplicial complex with m elements, then is a strong ring element with n*m elements. Its Barycentric refinement is the Whitney complex of … ….

In the book ‘This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress’, there are two entries which caught my eye because they both belong to interests of mine: geometry and calculus. The two articles are provided below. [I believe it is “fair use” as a reprint of these two articles helps not only to promote the book but also … ….

The strong ring The strong ring generated by simplicial complexes produces a category of geometric objects which carries a ring structure. Each element in the strong ring is a “geometric space” carrying cohomology (simplicial, and more general interaction cohomologies) and has nice spectral properties (like McKean Singer) and a “counting calculus” in which Euler characteristic is the most natural functional. … ….

Elements in the strong ring within the Stanley-Reisner ring still can be seen as geometric objects for which mathematical theorems known in topology hold. But there is also arithemetic. We remark that the multiplicative primes in the ring are the simplicial complexes. The Sabidussi theorem imlies that additive primes (particles) have a unique prime factorization (into elementary particles).

The graph limit We can prove now that the graph limit of the connection graph of Ln x Ln which is the strong product of Ln‘ with itself has a mass gap in the limit n to infinity. The picture below shows this product graph for n=13, and to the right s part of the spectrum near 0 for n=40. … ….